Anarcho punk and prog? Has Prog completely lost the plot? Not at all! The Crass co-founder started his musical career in the avant-garde performance art groups EXIT and Ceres Confusion, collaborated with jazz musicians with Crass Agenda, and has recently revisited the world of concept albums with a full-length recording inspired by John Coltrane and the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud.  So it’s high time we asked: how prog is Penny Rimbaud?  

Words: Rob Hughes

In 1967, Penny Rimbaud moved into Dial House, a derelict farm cottage on the fringe of Epping Forest in Essex. He and visual artist Gee Vaucher duly set about turning the 16th century pile into a centre for radical creativity and anarcho-pacifist ideals. For Rimbaud – then still going under his birth name of Jeremy Ratter – it marked the beginning of the rest of his life.

“I moved here when I was teaching part-time at art school,” he tells Prog via Zoom, seated by the window inside Dial House. “After a while I got very tired of teaching and walked out That’s when I set up this open house, partly because I didn’t know what else to do. I’d got all this sort of debris built up – of trying to make a life as a semi-professional teacher – and the only way I could deal with it was by getting rid of everything and seeing what happened. One weekend I invited as many people as possible to come along and just take what they wanted. All I had left was a cooker, a bed, a bookshelf and a book of Greek philosophy. It felt fabulous.”

“Musically, I’m open to anything. But I constantly return to Benjamin Britten and John Coltrane. Those two have been with me all my life.” 

Crass perform at St Phillips Community Centre in Swansea, Wales on September 24, 1981. Penny Rimbaud is on the drums.

STEVE RAPPORT/GETTY IMAGES